Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[rupert THURNER]

brion,

there is 10'000 km between you and me so i only read mails on this
list. would you mind detailing what you expect from your CEO to
trigger "she benefits me"?

best,
rupert


On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 2:41 AM, Brion Vibber  wrote:
> Lila, a few notes.
>
> First, many staff members feel that the accomplishments you claim under
> "we" are not attributable to you.
>
> Complaints about lack of strategy and confusing management have come from
> all levels of the staff; the implication that people who failed to be
> promoted might be behind discontent seems not to hold water.
>
> As to shutting down pet projects to improve focus, it's unclear what
> projects you refer to.
>
> Fundamentally we agree that we must improve tech. But the tech side of the
> organization, based on my conversations with other employees including
> managers, does not seem to have benefited from your tenure -- ops laregely
> manages itself, while the other sections get occasionally surprised by a
> reorg. We've still not fully recovered from the 2015 reorg and Damon's
> appearance and disappearance.
>
> If your contention is that tech supports you as a silent majority, I have
> strong doubts that this is the case.
>
> -- brion
>
> On Feb 21, 2016 4:22 PM, "Lila Tretikov"  wrote:
>>
>> Why we’ve changed
>>
>>
>> I want to address some of the many questions that are coming up in this
>> forum. From the general to the very concrete, they all touch on the fact
>> that many things about the WMF have been changing. We are in the thick of
>> transformation, and you all have the right to know more about how and why
>> this is occurring. This is not a statement of strategy, which will come
> out
>> of the community consultation next week. This is the ED’s perspective
> only.
>>
>>
>> After 15 years since the birth of Wikipedia, the WMF needs to rethink
>> itself to ensure our editor work expands into the next decade. Recently we
>> kicked-off some initiatives to this end, including aligning community
>> support functions, focus on mobile and innovative technology, seeding the
>> Wikimedia Endowment, re-organizing our internal structure, exploring
>> partnerships and focusing on the most critical aspects of our mission:
>> community and technology. We started this transformation, but as we move
>> forward we are facing a crisis that is rooted in our choice of direction.
>>
>>
>> The choice in front the WMF is that of our core identity. Our mission can
>> be served in many ways, but we cannot do them all. We could either fully
>> focus on building our content and educational programs. Or we can get
> great
>> at technology as the force multiplier for our movement. I believe the the
>> former belongs to our volunteers and affiliates and that the role of the
>> WMF is in providing global support and coordination of this work. I
> believe
>> in -- and the board hired me to -- focus on the latter. To transform our
>> organization into a high-tech NGO, focused on the needs of our editors and
>> readers and rapidly moving to update our aged technology to support those
>> needs. To this end we have made many significant changes. But the
> challenge
>> in front of us is hard to underestimate: technology moves faster than any
>> other field and meeting expectations of editors and readers  will require
>> undistracted focus.
>>
>>
>> What changed?
>>
>>
>> When Jimmy started Wikipedia, the early editors took a century-old
>> encyclopedia page and allowed anyone to create or edit its content. At the
>> time when creating knowledge was still limited to the chosen few, openly
>> collaborating online gave us power to create and update knowledge at a
> much
>> faster rate than anyone else. This was our innovation.
>>
>>
>> As we matured, we encountered two fundamental, existential challenges. One
>> is of our own doing: driving away those who would otherwise join our
>> mission through complex policies, confusing user experiences, and a
> caustic
>> community culture. The other is external and is emerging from our own
> value
>> of freely licensed content: Many companies copy our knowledge into their
>> own databases and present it inside their interfaces. While this supports
>> wider dissemination, it also separates our readers from our community.
>> Wikipedia
>> is more than the raw content, repurposed by anyone as they like. It is a
>> platform for knowledge and learning, but if we don't meet the needs of
>> users, we will lose them and ultimately fail in our mission.
>>
>>
>> Meanwhile, in the last 15 years revolutionary changes have taken hold. The
>> rate of knowledge creation around the world is unprecedented and is
> increasing
>> exponentially .
> User
>> interfaces are becoming more adaptive to how users learn. This means we
>> have a huge opportunity to accelerate human understanding. But to do so
>> requires some significant change in technology and community interaction.
>>
>>
>> So let’s beg

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[geni]

On 22 February 2016 at 01:06, Pete Forsyth  wrote:

> The discussion about post-mortems arose rather organically, not as a result
> of a decision to use a certain medium. The participants were: Jonathan
> Cardy, Erik Möller, Dariusz Jemielniak, myself, Ben Creasy, Asaf Bartov,
> Jon Beasley-Murray, Bence Damakos, Luis Villa, Eddie Erhart, Liam Wyatt,
> and Tisza Gergő. I think it is fair to say that we had a general consensus
> that:
>
> When something does not go well (for instance, various software releases),
> it would be highly valuable for the Wikimedia Foundation's senior
> leadership to prioritize creating a thoughtful and official post-mortem
> document and discussion.
>

So they want there to be even more incentives for the foundation never to
admit failure?


-- 
geni
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[Asaf Bartov]

Please consider, Gerard: Maybe it is time you stopped explaining to us all
what is and isn't the point.

   A.

On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 9:26 PM, Gerard Meijssen 
wrote:

> Hoi,
>
>  It is not that I am not with Brion.  The problem is multi
> faceted and I do not pretend that I know personell and how Lila is
> appreciated. I am talking about community and about perceptions and maybe a
> bit of the sociology of all this.
>
> Being for or against is not the point, hearing arguments where they are
> made is at issue. If all we can do is state positions and let the dice
> role, a lot more people will be hurt than necessary.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
> On 22 February 2016 at 06:04, Anna Stillwell 
> wrote:
>
> > I'm with Vibber. He has seen things clearly.
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 8:56 PM, Gerard Meijssen <
> > gerard.meijs...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hoi,
> > > Where have you been when the search was on for a new director for the
> > > WIkimedia Foundation? It was the vision that Lila refers to that made
> her
> > > the chosen candidate. The fact that people object, frustrate and
> > sometimes
> > > sabotage is an unfortunate micro level consequence of what is
> happening.
> > >
> > > Yes, we as a community are extremely self serving, we care for our own
> > > hobby horses and we do not consider the impact of this narrow
> mindedness.
> > > It makes what Lila stand for one enemy, others who have differing
> > > objectives are at best ignored because arguments do not really matter,
> > are
> > > ignored or are refuted by quoting the same old old.
> > > Thanks,
> > >   GerardM
> > >
> > > On 22 February 2016 at 05:38, Nathan  wrote:
> > >
> > > > Lila's statement of her vision for WMF is compelling and attractive.
> If
> > > > properly and faithfully executed, it seems like it would make just
> the
> > > > right adjustments to the culture of the WMF and its interaction with
> > and
> > > > support of the Wikimedia community. I have long been concerned that a
> > > > number of positions at the WMF amounted to sinecures, or at least
> > > returned
> > > > little value to the projects in exchange for resources expended. It
> > seems
> > > > logical to me that such a radical change, even well enacted, would
> > prompt
> > > > discontent and departures from the organization.
> > > >
> > > > That said, I'm not convinced that this paradigm shift has been
> handled
> > > well
> > > > by the WMF executive team and the board. First and foremost, this
> > > statement
> > > > from Lila is the best explanation given anywhere that I'm aware of
> > > > describing the shift within the WMF. That is not good. Second, it
> > appears
> > > > that the work has not been done to get key members of the paid team
> and
> > > > volunteers on board with this process. This is another very
> substantial
> > > > failure.
> > > >
> > > > For anyone who believes that Lila's vision statement is right for the
> > > > future of the WMF, these unforced errors should cause serious
> anguish -
> > > > needed changes might be lost or avoided because incompetent execution
> > of
> > > > prior initiatives left everyone deeply change-averse.
> > > > ___
> > > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > Unsubscribe:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > > 
> > > >
> > > ___
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > 
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Anna Stillwell
> > Major Gifts Officer
> > Wikimedia Foundation
> > 415.806.1536
> > *www.wikimediafoundation.org *
> > ___
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> > 
> >
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> 
>



-- 
Asaf Bartov
Wikimedia Foundation 

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,

 It is not that I am not with Brion.  The problem is multi
faceted and I do not pretend that I know personell and how Lila is
appreciated. I am talking about community and about perceptions and maybe a
bit of the sociology of all this.

Being for or against is not the point, hearing arguments where they are
made is at issue. If all we can do is state positions and let the dice
role, a lot more people will be hurt than necessary.
Thanks,
  GerardM

On 22 February 2016 at 06:04, Anna Stillwell 
wrote:

> I'm with Vibber. He has seen things clearly.
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 8:56 PM, Gerard Meijssen <
> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > Where have you been when the search was on for a new director for the
> > WIkimedia Foundation? It was the vision that Lila refers to that made her
> > the chosen candidate. The fact that people object, frustrate and
> sometimes
> > sabotage is an unfortunate micro level consequence of what is happening.
> >
> > Yes, we as a community are extremely self serving, we care for our own
> > hobby horses and we do not consider the impact of this narrow mindedness.
> > It makes what Lila stand for one enemy, others who have differing
> > objectives are at best ignored because arguments do not really matter,
> are
> > ignored or are refuted by quoting the same old old.
> > Thanks,
> >   GerardM
> >
> > On 22 February 2016 at 05:38, Nathan  wrote:
> >
> > > Lila's statement of her vision for WMF is compelling and attractive. If
> > > properly and faithfully executed, it seems like it would make just the
> > > right adjustments to the culture of the WMF and its interaction with
> and
> > > support of the Wikimedia community. I have long been concerned that a
> > > number of positions at the WMF amounted to sinecures, or at least
> > returned
> > > little value to the projects in exchange for resources expended. It
> seems
> > > logical to me that such a radical change, even well enacted, would
> prompt
> > > discontent and departures from the organization.
> > >
> > > That said, I'm not convinced that this paradigm shift has been handled
> > well
> > > by the WMF executive team and the board. First and foremost, this
> > statement
> > > from Lila is the best explanation given anywhere that I'm aware of
> > > describing the shift within the WMF. That is not good. Second, it
> appears
> > > that the work has not been done to get key members of the paid team and
> > > volunteers on board with this process. This is another very substantial
> > > failure.
> > >
> > > For anyone who believes that Lila's vision statement is right for the
> > > future of the WMF, these unforced errors should cause serious anguish -
> > > needed changes might be lost or avoided because incompetent execution
> of
> > > prior initiatives left everyone deeply change-averse.
> > > ___
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > 
> > >
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Anna Stillwell
> Major Gifts Officer
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 415.806.1536
> *www.wikimediafoundation.org *
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[Oliver Keyes]

I'm with Vibber too. I work in Engineering. This summary does not
represent my views, or the views of anyone I know.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 12:04 AM, Anna Stillwell
 wrote:
> I'm with Vibber. He has seen things clearly.
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 8:56 PM, Gerard Meijssen 
> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> Where have you been when the search was on for a new director for the
>> WIkimedia Foundation? It was the vision that Lila refers to that made her
>> the chosen candidate. The fact that people object, frustrate and sometimes
>> sabotage is an unfortunate micro level consequence of what is happening.
>>
>> Yes, we as a community are extremely self serving, we care for our own
>> hobby horses and we do not consider the impact of this narrow mindedness.
>> It makes what Lila stand for one enemy, others who have differing
>> objectives are at best ignored because arguments do not really matter, are
>> ignored or are refuted by quoting the same old old.
>> Thanks,
>>   GerardM
>>
>> On 22 February 2016 at 05:38, Nathan  wrote:
>>
>> > Lila's statement of her vision for WMF is compelling and attractive. If
>> > properly and faithfully executed, it seems like it would make just the
>> > right adjustments to the culture of the WMF and its interaction with and
>> > support of the Wikimedia community. I have long been concerned that a
>> > number of positions at the WMF amounted to sinecures, or at least
>> returned
>> > little value to the projects in exchange for resources expended. It seems
>> > logical to me that such a radical change, even well enacted, would prompt
>> > discontent and departures from the organization.
>> >
>> > That said, I'm not convinced that this paradigm shift has been handled
>> well
>> > by the WMF executive team and the board. First and foremost, this
>> statement
>> > from Lila is the best explanation given anywhere that I'm aware of
>> > describing the shift within the WMF. That is not good. Second, it appears
>> > that the work has not been done to get key members of the paid team and
>> > volunteers on board with this process. This is another very substantial
>> > failure.
>> >
>> > For anyone who believes that Lila's vision statement is right for the
>> > future of the WMF, these unforced errors should cause serious anguish -
>> > needed changes might be lost or avoided because incompetent execution of
>> > prior initiatives left everyone deeply change-averse.
>> > ___
>> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
>> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
>> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> > 
>> >
>> ___
>> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
>> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
>> 
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Anna Stillwell
> Major Gifts Officer
> Wikimedia Foundation
> 415.806.1536
> *www.wikimediafoundation.org *
> ___
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> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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> 

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[Nathan]

On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 11:56 PM, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:

> Hoi,
> Where have you been when the search was on for a new director for the
> WIkimedia Foundation? It was the vision that Lila refers to that made her
> the chosen candidate. The fact that people object, frustrate and sometimes
> sabotage is an unfortunate micro level consequence of what is happening.
>

Most of what I read at that time, and since, has revolved around some
simplistic version of "make the WMF a technology / high tech organization."
For that reason the OP here struck me as the best and most complete
statement of this vision that I have read. If you are aware of a better one
that I have missed (completely possible, even likely!), could you please
provide a link?

Thanks,
Nathan
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[Anna Stillwell]

I'm with Vibber. He has seen things clearly.


On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 8:56 PM, Gerard Meijssen 
wrote:

> Hoi,
> Where have you been when the search was on for a new director for the
> WIkimedia Foundation? It was the vision that Lila refers to that made her
> the chosen candidate. The fact that people object, frustrate and sometimes
> sabotage is an unfortunate micro level consequence of what is happening.
>
> Yes, we as a community are extremely self serving, we care for our own
> hobby horses and we do not consider the impact of this narrow mindedness.
> It makes what Lila stand for one enemy, others who have differing
> objectives are at best ignored because arguments do not really matter, are
> ignored or are refuted by quoting the same old old.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
> On 22 February 2016 at 05:38, Nathan  wrote:
>
> > Lila's statement of her vision for WMF is compelling and attractive. If
> > properly and faithfully executed, it seems like it would make just the
> > right adjustments to the culture of the WMF and its interaction with and
> > support of the Wikimedia community. I have long been concerned that a
> > number of positions at the WMF amounted to sinecures, or at least
> returned
> > little value to the projects in exchange for resources expended. It seems
> > logical to me that such a radical change, even well enacted, would prompt
> > discontent and departures from the organization.
> >
> > That said, I'm not convinced that this paradigm shift has been handled
> well
> > by the WMF executive team and the board. First and foremost, this
> statement
> > from Lila is the best explanation given anywhere that I'm aware of
> > describing the shift within the WMF. That is not good. Second, it appears
> > that the work has not been done to get key members of the paid team and
> > volunteers on board with this process. This is another very substantial
> > failure.
> >
> > For anyone who believes that Lila's vision statement is right for the
> > future of the WMF, these unforced errors should cause serious anguish -
> > needed changes might be lost or avoided because incompetent execution of
> > prior initiatives left everyone deeply change-averse.
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> >
> ___
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> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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> 
>



-- 
Anna Stillwell
Major Gifts Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
415.806.1536
*www.wikimediafoundation.org *
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Where have you been when the search was on for a new director for the
WIkimedia Foundation? It was the vision that Lila refers to that made her
the chosen candidate. The fact that people object, frustrate and sometimes
sabotage is an unfortunate micro level consequence of what is happening.

Yes, we as a community are extremely self serving, we care for our own
hobby horses and we do not consider the impact of this narrow mindedness.
It makes what Lila stand for one enemy, others who have differing
objectives are at best ignored because arguments do not really matter, are
ignored or are refuted by quoting the same old old.
Thanks,
  GerardM

On 22 February 2016 at 05:38, Nathan  wrote:

> Lila's statement of her vision for WMF is compelling and attractive. If
> properly and faithfully executed, it seems like it would make just the
> right adjustments to the culture of the WMF and its interaction with and
> support of the Wikimedia community. I have long been concerned that a
> number of positions at the WMF amounted to sinecures, or at least returned
> little value to the projects in exchange for resources expended. It seems
> logical to me that such a radical change, even well enacted, would prompt
> discontent and departures from the organization.
>
> That said, I'm not convinced that this paradigm shift has been handled well
> by the WMF executive team and the board. First and foremost, this statement
> from Lila is the best explanation given anywhere that I'm aware of
> describing the shift within the WMF. That is not good. Second, it appears
> that the work has not been done to get key members of the paid team and
> volunteers on board with this process. This is another very substantial
> failure.
>
> For anyone who believes that Lila's vision statement is right for the
> future of the WMF, these unforced errors should cause serious anguish -
> needed changes might be lost or avoided because incompetent execution of
> prior initiatives left everyone deeply change-averse.
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[Anthony Cole]

I hope to see some rigorous, independent analysis of the current crisis,
once the dust has settled. It'd be nice for that to be initiated and funded
outside the WMF but with their full cooperation. Is there a charitable
foundation whose mission would cover this?

Anthony Cole


On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 12:25 PM, Pete Forsyth 
wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 7:53 PM, SarahSV  wrote:
>
> > ​Pete, I think having a "truth and reconciliation" period would be
> > helpful. I would like to see that process include Lila, which is why I
> > talked earlier about calling in a professional mediation service.
> >
> > But leaving that aside, for the Foundation and community a period of
> honest
> > exchange and understanding could be very healing.
>
>
> Thanks Sarah, I agree. As I stated in the earlier discussion, I think it's
> especially valuable, for a significant issue, when someone in senior
> leadership initiates the process, and takes a sustained interest in it
> going well. The need for post-mortems presents, I would think, a good
> opportunity for Lila (or any Board member) to begin taking a path forward.
>
> Perhaps some reflection (either privately or publicly) on the impact of the
> Belfer Center document would be a good starting point. (I don't suggest
> that process was entirely perfect, but I do think it was effective.) Since
> it predates Lila's hire, it might not carry as much baggage as other
> topics.
>
> One small quibble -- I don't think "truth and reconciliation" is the best
> framing, though in the current context I can see the relevance. But I would
> suggest that in general, publicly documenting successful and unsuccessful
> efforts is a fantastic way for organizations of all kinds to encourage
> healthy communication and ongoing learning. It doesn't need to be a big
> dramatic thing, and it doesn't need to be very time-consuming, to be
> effective.
>
> -Pete
> [[User:Peteforsyth]]
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[Nathan]

Lila's statement of her vision for WMF is compelling and attractive. If
properly and faithfully executed, it seems like it would make just the
right adjustments to the culture of the WMF and its interaction with and
support of the Wikimedia community. I have long been concerned that a
number of positions at the WMF amounted to sinecures, or at least returned
little value to the projects in exchange for resources expended. It seems
logical to me that such a radical change, even well enacted, would prompt
discontent and departures from the organization.

That said, I'm not convinced that this paradigm shift has been handled well
by the WMF executive team and the board. First and foremost, this statement
from Lila is the best explanation given anywhere that I'm aware of
describing the shift within the WMF. That is not good. Second, it appears
that the work has not been done to get key members of the paid team and
volunteers on board with this process. This is another very substantial
failure.

For anyone who believes that Lila's vision statement is right for the
future of the WMF, these unforced errors should cause serious anguish -
needed changes might be lost or avoided because incompetent execution of
prior initiatives left everyone deeply change-averse.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[Pete Forsyth]

On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 7:53 PM, SarahSV  wrote:

> ​Pete, I think having a "truth and reconciliation" period would be
> helpful. I would like to see that process include Lila, which is why I
> talked earlier about calling in a professional mediation service.
>
> But leaving that aside, for the Foundation and community a period of honest
> exchange and understanding could be very healing.


Thanks Sarah, I agree. As I stated in the earlier discussion, I think it's
especially valuable, for a significant issue, when someone in senior
leadership initiates the process, and takes a sustained interest in it
going well. The need for post-mortems presents, I would think, a good
opportunity for Lila (or any Board member) to begin taking a path forward.

Perhaps some reflection (either privately or publicly) on the impact of the
Belfer Center document would be a good starting point. (I don't suggest
that process was entirely perfect, but I do think it was effective.) Since
it predates Lila's hire, it might not carry as much baggage as other topics.

One small quibble -- I don't think "truth and reconciliation" is the best
framing, though in the current context I can see the relevance. But I would
suggest that in general, publicly documenting successful and unsuccessful
efforts is a fantastic way for organizations of all kinds to encourage
healthy communication and ongoing learning. It doesn't need to be a big
dramatic thing, and it doesn't need to be very time-consuming, to be
effective.

-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[Virgilio A. P. Machado]

Lila,

Congratulations for having such a clear and wise understanding of the
present and future of Wikimedia. Your views collide with those of many who
from positions of power both at the WMF and the communities have had a
chance to impose them on everybody else, squashing, blocking and deleting
dissent. Your task will not be easy, but you are doing the right thing.

With respect to the Gender Gap, I believe there's room for improvement
recognizing that there's more than men and women. The contributions of the
LBGT genders are not adequately recognized.

I'm also very sorry to have to state that although you have the freedom to
share you views using this list, and many that nurtured for you nothing
else but hate and contempt, I have no such freedom. Following a dubious
process, that has been described elsewhere and of which, conveniently, only
part is saved in the list archives, this comment will only reach the
members of this list if a group of censors (kindly called "moderators")
approve it for publication.

This message is sent at the risk of having myself removed form this list,
as it has already happened from others, for reasons that shame any human
being worthy of that name. To have my support might also not do any good
for you. I fear that it will bring more hate to bear on you. That is the
fate of the human condition, to be its own worst enemy.

I wish you, the Foundation and Wikimedia all the best, and a bright and
shining future,

Virgilio A. P. Machado
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[Kevin Smith]

On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 5:41 PM, Brion Vibber  wrote:

> First, many staff members feel that the accomplishments you claim under
> "we" are not attributable to you.
>

I assumed that's why she used the word "we". I took it that she was taking
some credit for pushing some of the initiatives, but not that she was
taking credit for all of the results.


> Complaints about lack of strategy and confusing management have come from
> all levels of the staff; the implication that people who failed to be
> promoted might be behind discontent seems not to hold water.
>

I didn't see any such implication when I read it. If it is/was implied, I
would agree with your disagreement.

As to shutting down pet projects to improve focus, it's unclear what
> projects you refer to.
>

Agreed.


> Fundamentally we agree that we must improve tech. But the tech side of the
> organization, based on my conversations with other employees including
> managers, does not seem to have benefited from your tenure -- ops laregely
> manages itself, while the other sections get occasionally surprised by a
> reorg. We've still not fully recovered from the 2015 reorg and Damon's
> appearance and disappearance.
>

The process that led to the 2015 reorg was horrible. And the current
structure is far from perfect. But I think the structure of the tech
departments of the WMF after the re-org is, overall, much more effective
than it was before the re-org. I say that having only experienced the old
structure for a couple months, so my perspective is limited.

The tech parts of the org seem to have more of a sense of accountability
now, with more of a focus on outcomes, and costs, than before. Again, it's
far from perfect, but those seem like healthy improvements, as part of an
organization maturing. I know a lot of techies will disagree (strongly!),
as they prefer more of a "hacker" culture, and they feel we are becoming
too "corporate". I would like to see us settle in at a happy medium,
avoiding either extreme.

I think those are a couple ways in which the tech org *has* benefited from
Lila's tenure. It's very possible that those benefits are overshadowed by
other problems. But I think anyone who sees absolutely zero improvements
either has clouded judgment, or isn't paying attention. I would prefer to
judge each action and decision (by anyone) on its own merits, attempting to
avoid the "halo effect/horns effect"[1].


>
> If your contention is that tech supports you as a silent majority, I have
> strong doubts that this is the case.
>

I didn't see any indication that this was being asserted. If it is/was
being asserted, I would agree with your doubts.

Recognizing that change *is* painful and difficult is valuable. I think
people generally tend to underestimate that pain, and I think that has
happened here. It's not clear how much of the pain we are experiencing is
due to "change", and how much is due to other causes. I'm pretty sure
change itself is a non-zero (and underestimated) component, but obviously
it doesn't account for anywhere near 100% either.

For me, this essay as a whole is a welcome (and probably long overdue)
expression of Lila's vision for where she wants to take the WMF, and why.
Perhaps I'm naive, but I am assuming good faith here. Understanding Lila's
tech focus is important, since that has been a point of contention with
many people. Whether that vision is optimal for the org is debatable, of
course.

Kevin


[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems

[Molly White]

It would be fairly trivial to archive the discussions there someplace that 
was publicly viewable. However, it would require consent from the ~450 (at 
last glance) members that their comments and the names they use on Facebook 
be published, and I'm not sure that's feasible. Still, it's a thought...

There is some valuable discussion that happens there, and it would be neat 
to replicate it somewhere more accessible and free, even in a read-only 
format.

– Molly (GorillaWarfare)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] "BuzzFeed: Days of Counting Pageviews and Unique Visitors Are Over"

[Jeff Elder]

These are good thoughts, Pine! I'm glad you brought them up.

One of my favorite things about our social media in my five months at the
WMF has been reaching people who are enthusiastic about the movement and
eager to connect more.

“Wikipedia is why, even though I spent most of my adult life out of school
as a refugee, when I finally got to a safe place and into a university I
was able not only to compete with my peers, but to excel,” a Facebook user
named Ali who was born in Iraq and now lives in the United States posted on
our page.

We have more than 2 million Facebook followers in the "Global South," and
many are enthusiastic and curious to know more. We have at times asked
people on Facebook to tell us where in the world they are, and the
greetings we get back from around the world
 are fantastic.

At the same time, we also hear from editors such as Lilit from Armenia, who
posted: “Wikipedia has become our way of living, the idea which unites all
the editors around the world!”

If Ali and Lilit sound familiar, they were featured on our Wikipedia 15
website  with these Facebook comments. Reaching
budding Wikipedians is a big part ofour social strategy
.

Our verified Facebook , Twitter
 and Instagram
 accounts are places to showcase our
content and show that it is part of a movement of people.

We need more Wikipedians who enjoy social media and would like to help
guide our accounts. If that's you, I'd love to hear from you.

Jeff Elder
Digital communications manager
Wikimedia Foundation
704-650-4130
@jeffelder 
@wikipedia 
The Wikimedia blog 

On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 5:18 PM, Ed Erhart  wrote:

> Hi Pine,
>
> A big part of our efforts are to humanize the movement, surface our
> content, and reach new audiences—research shows that public awareness of
> Wikipedia and what it does is not as high as you'd think in emerging
> communities.
>
> The blog has been running in-depth and detailed articles like "News on
> Wikipedia: Antonin Scalia and the editor tracking his legacy,"[1] "These
> Texans are on a quest to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of their state’s
> revolution,"[2] and "Fifteen years ago, Wikipedia was a very different
> place: Magnus Manske"[3] to showcase our editors and contributors, along
> with their contributions to the movement. We plan to continue this in the
> coming months.
>
> Our posts that look at article popularity try to go deeper, examining the
> editing behind them. Antonin Scalia does that, as does "Millions read Bowie
> biography following sudden death."[4] We highlight featured articles
> wherever possible.
>
> We also surface fantastic content from our contributors, such as
> "Recording romanticism and filling Wikimedia Commons with 19th-century
> music"[5] or "Love is strange: ten weird Valentine’s facts from
> Wikipedia,"[6] although I freely admit that our social media platforms can
> do this far more often than the blog can.
>
> I'm cc'ing Jeff Elder, Digital Communications Manager, on this email so
> that he can talk about his fantastic work on social media. Some of the
> comments we get are astounding, and we've started the process of expanding
> to new platforms—including Instagram.[7]
>
> Best,
> --Ed
>
> [1] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/17/scalia-wikipedia/
> [2]
> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/06/30/improving-wikipedia-texas-revolution/
> [3]
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/18/fifteen-years-wikipedia-magnus-manske/
> [4] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/28/bowie-death-wikipedia/
> [5] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/14/spain-recording-romanticism/
> [6] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/12/love-is-strange/
> [7] https://www.instagram.com/wikipedia/
>
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 5:33 PM, Pine W  wrote:
>
>> An interesting article in Fortune:
>> http://fortune.com/2016/02/19/buzzfeed-metrics/. "One of the biggest
>> challenges in online publishing, Nguyen says, is the continual process of
>> re-evaluating what criteria the company should be looking at in order to
>> gauge its effectiveness in reaching an audience, a process that BuzzFeed
>> calls “re-anchoring.” In effect, it’s an almost scientific approach of
>> checking to see whether the thing being measured is actually the thing
>> that
>> is most important."
>>
>> While WMF seems to be focused on pageviews for fundraising reasons (and I
>> would guess that this is also the thinking behind WMF Communications
>> increasing its staff and budget for social media), I hope that we can
>> explicitly include off-wiki uses of Wikimedia content in our measures of
>> impact and success.
>>
>> Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 3:42 AM, SarahSV  wrote:

> That was literally the first time we felt we were being listened to. There
> was one point when Flow was introduced – and I have been trying to find
> this diff but can't – where there was something on the talk page that
> amounted to "if you agree with us that x and y, then you're welcome to join
> the discussion."
>
> So from the start, it felt as though staffers had ruled out the community
> as people who might know something about what tools are needed to
> collaborate on an article (which is not the same as chatting). People who
> had been doing something for years were not regarded as experts in that
> thing by the Foundation.
>
> We would say "we need pages," and they would explain why we didn't. We
> would say "we need archives," and they would explain why good search was a
> better idea. We would say "there's too much white space," and they would
> explain that people like white space. And so on.



I must say, what Sarah says here rather matches my recollection.

Andreas
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 12:22 AM, Lila Tretikov  wrote:

> When we started, the open knowledge on Wikipedia was a large piece of the
> internet. Today, we have an opportunity to be the door into the whole
> ecosystem of open knowledge by:
>
>
>- scaling knowledge (by building smart editing tools that structurally
>connect open sources)
>- expanding the entry point to knowledge (by improving our search
> portal)
>


Lila,

Could you please explain the reasoning behind the focus on "open knowledge"
and "open sources" in what you wrote above?

Just to avoid any misunderstanding -- I am of course well aware that
Wikipedia itself is (at its best) "open knowledge". This, after all, is
what volunteers are here to build – a body of open knowledge.

But I would contend that if we are talking about Wikipedia aspiring to
be a *door
*to something, then that aspiration is to be the door to *all knowledge*,
isn't it? Not the door to *open knowledge*?

This is reflected in the fundamental Wikimedia vision, which is -- to this
day -- for people to be able to freely share in "the sum of all knowledge"
-- not "the sum of all *open* knowledge" (i.e. knowledge that is *already*
 open).

In line with this vision, Wikipedia for example cites all manner of sources
today – from paywalled journals and books costing hundreds of dollars to
CC-licensed and public-domain websites.

Indeed, in terms of creating open knowledge, content based on the most
exclusive, most expensive sources is arguably the most valuable content
Wikimedia projects contain: it liberates knowledge that would otherwise be
inaccessible to those without ample enough means -- or indeed any means --
to pay.

Beyond that, there are many mainstream sources of knowledge that are "All
rights reserved", i.e. not open, yet can still be consulted by anyone with
an Internet connection, without payment.

We all consult such sources every day. They include publications like the
Guardian newspaper (whose publisher's board Jimmy Wales joined recently);
the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; CNN; and thousands of others.
These are high-quality knowledge sources that are "All rights reserved" --
not open -- yet freely accessible.

So, if you speak of structurally connecting *open* sources, as a basis for
smart editing tools, you seem to be saying that such copyrighted yet openly
accessible sources, as well as all genuinely paywalled sources, should be
excluded from these efforts.

If that's correct, and I am not misunderstanding what you mean to say here
(please correct me if I do!), how do you square it with the Wikimedia
vision?

Andreas
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[Brandon Harris]

> On Feb 21, 2016, at 7:48 PM, Pete Forsyth  wrote:
> 
> Do you agree that an annotated summary of what has gone well and what
> hasn't, in the case of discussion technology like Liquid Threads and Flow,
> might help us to have generative conversations on this topic?

Not in the slightest.  Having a conversation about anything this 
divisive is completely pointless and draining; no one listens to anyone else 
and everyone blames everyone else for not listening - especially because 
everyone claims "I'm not being heard" (even if they are, and are just disagreed 
with.)

I could write up a whole big thing about this to try to create clarity 
but it doesn't matter; the only responses will be claims that the WMF (and 
myself in particular) are operating only in bad faith or "being rude" or we'll 
have some chuckleheads (who never try to help, claim to be expert engineers, 
but never seem to be able to back up those claims) talk shit about the skill 
sets in engineering and derail the conversation.

So no.  I don't believe this will be useful.

---
Brandon Harris :: bhar...@gaijin.com :: made of steel wool and whiskey




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[SarahSV]

On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 8:48 PM, Pete Forsyth  wrote:

>
> Do you agree that an annotated summary of what has gone well and what
> hasn't, in the case of discussion technology like Liquid Threads and Flow,
> might help us to have generative conversations on this topic? Or do you
> disagree? What kinds of approaches do you think might help the organization
> and the community learn the best lessons from past efforts, avoid repeating
> mistakes, and find ever more effective ways to engage with each other?
>
> ​Pete, I think having a "truth and reconciliation" period would be
helpful. I would like to see that process include Lila, which is why I
talked earlier about calling in a professional mediation service.

But leaving that aside, for the Foundation and community a period of honest
exchange and understanding could be very healing.

Sarah​
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[Risker]

On 21 February 2016 at 22:42, SarahSV  wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 8:19 PM, Pete Forsyth 
> wrote:
>
> >
> > Is it possible to imagine an effort that would not be shot down, but
> > embraced?
> >
> > What would need to be different?
> >
> > These are the kinds of questions I wish the Wikimedia Foundation would
> get
> > better at asking and exploring.
> >
> > ​Lila is good at asking the right questions of the community, which is
> why
> (so far as I can tell) editors like her. If you look at her meta talk page,
> you can see her asking good questions about Flow and trying to find out
> what editors need.
>
> That was literally the first time we felt we were being listened to. There
> was one point when Flow was introduced – and I have been trying to find
> this diff but can't – where there was something on the talk page that
> amounted to "if you agree with us that x and y, then you're welcome to join
> the discussion."
>
> So from the start, it felt as though staffers had ruled out the community
> as people who might know something about what tools are needed to
> collaborate on an article (which is not the same as chatting). People who
> had been doing something for years were not regarded as experts in that
> thing by the Foundation.
>
> We would say "we need pages," and they would explain why we didn't. We
> would say "we need archives," and they would explain why good search was a
> better idea. We would say "there's too much white space," and they would
> explain that people like white space. And so on.
>
> Sarah
>
> ​
>


I can think of Echo/Notifications which, despite some rather minor
grumblings and need for a few tweaks at the beginning, has been fully
embraced by the community.  It's not entirely perfect for all use cases,
but it is so much better than anything we had before.  It's become so
natural to ping someone with {{u|username here}} that I can barely remember
a time when it wasn't the norm.

RIsker/Anne
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[Pete Forsyth]

Brandon and Sarah:

I'm going to resist the urge to delve into the specifics of Flow here, as
I'd really like to stay on the topic of whether post-mortems on divisive
issues are valuable, and how they should be approached.

Do you agree that an annotated summary of what has gone well and what
hasn't, in the case of discussion technology like Liquid Threads and Flow,
might help us to have generative conversations on this topic? Or do you
disagree? What kinds of approaches do you think might help the organization
and the community learn the best lessons from past efforts, avoid repeating
mistakes, and find ever more effective ways to engage with each other?

-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]

On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 7:42 PM, SarahSV  wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 8:19 PM, Pete Forsyth 
> wrote:
>
> >
> > Is it possible to imagine an effort that would not be shot down, but
> > embraced?
> >
> > What would need to be different?
> >
> > These are the kinds of questions I wish the Wikimedia Foundation would
> get
> > better at asking and exploring.
> >
> > ​Lila is good at asking the right questions of the community, which is
> why
> (so far as I can tell) editors like her. If you look at her meta talk page,
> you can see her asking good questions about Flow and trying to find out
> what editors need.
>
> That was literally the first time we felt we were being listened to. There
> was one point when Flow was introduced – and I have been trying to find
> this diff but can't – where there was something on the talk page that
> amounted to "if you agree with us that x and y, then you're welcome to join
> the discussion."
>
> So from the start, it felt as though staffers had ruled out the community
> as people who might know something about what tools are needed to
> collaborate on an article (which is not the same as chatting). People who
> had been doing something for years were not regarded as experts in that
> thing by the Foundation.
>
> We would say "we need pages," and they would explain why we didn't. We
> would say "we need archives," and they would explain why good search was a
> better idea. We would say "there's too much white space," and they would
> explain that people like white space. And so on.
>
> Sarah
>
> ​
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[SarahSV]

On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 8:19 PM, Pete Forsyth  wrote:

>
> Is it possible to imagine an effort that would not be shot down, but
> embraced?
>
> What would need to be different?
>
> These are the kinds of questions I wish the Wikimedia Foundation would get
> better at asking and exploring.
>
> ​Lila is good at asking the right questions of the community, which is why
(so far as I can tell) editors like her. If you look at her meta talk page,
you can see her asking good questions about Flow and trying to find out
what editors need.

That was literally the first time we felt we were being listened to. There
was one point when Flow was introduced – and I have been trying to find
this diff but can't – where there was something on the talk page that
amounted to "if you agree with us that x and y, then you're welcome to join
the discussion."

So from the start, it felt as though staffers had ruled out the community
as people who might know something about what tools are needed to
collaborate on an article (which is not the same as chatting). People who
had been doing something for years were not regarded as experts in that
thing by the Foundation.

We would say "we need pages," and they would explain why we didn't. We
would say "we need archives," and they would explain why good search was a
better idea. We would say "there's too much white space," and they would
explain that people like white space. And so on.

Sarah

​
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[Brandon Harris]

> On Feb 21, 2016, at 7:19 PM, Pete Forsyth  wrote:
> 
>  Here, Brandon, I think you're
> implying that there is fundamental resistance to change. 

Let me disabuse you of a notion:  I am not _implying_ this.  I am 
_directly stating it._

---
Brandon Harris :: bhar...@gaijin.com :: made of steel wool and whiskey




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[Pete Forsyth]

> On Feb 21, 2016, at 3:54 PM, Thyge  wrote:
>
> I really wonder why wikimedia discussions have migrated to FB. ...

On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 4:00 PM, Brandon Harris  wrote:

> Because Talk pages suck as a medium for conversation and all
> attempts to fix this have been shot down with venom.


This is a very important point to discuss -- and actually circles us back
to the topic of post-mortems.

When software features are unpopular, it is very important to carefully
consider the reasons for their unpopularity. Here, Brandon, I think you're
implying that there is fundamental resistance to change. I disagree; I
think the attempts (Liquid Threads and Flow), though there was great
technical merit in them, were approached in ways that felt threatening to
Wikimedians.

If we disagree on this, that's OK -- I don't expect to resolve this
disagreement here on the list. But I do think we should have a thorough,
careful evaluation of how the Liquid Threads and Flow projects were
approached. It should include what factors contributed to and detracted
from their popularity among Wikimedians. That, I think, would establish a
shared understanding that would support discourse about whether or not it
is possible to design better discussion software, and how that could be
more effectively approached.

Why were past efforts shot down?

Is it possible to imagine an effort that would not be shot down, but
embraced?

What would need to be different?

These are the kinds of questions I wish the Wikimedia Foundation would get
better at asking and exploring.

-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems

[Risker]

Meh, I'm fine with people talking in any venue they wish.  Speaking only
for myself, I don't need to read everything everyone has written; if it's
something that needs to be brought to broader attention, chances are
someone will facilitate it.  But I think even those who are entirely happy
to be on Facebook would agree there's a bit of an irony on talking about
the respect for Wikimedia community values on a site that explicitly
doesn't share them.

That, and it's a bit unfair to tease people.

Risker/Anne

On 21 February 2016 at 22:01, Gergő Tisza  wrote:

> One example of the shortcomings of emails as a medium for complex
> discussions is how this thread about postmortems continues to be diverted
> into discussions about Facebook, despite Pete's best efforts.
>
> At the end of the day, people will prefer tools that work well over tools
> that align philosophically. One can sabotage the development of tools that
> would both work well and uphold Wikimedia's values, but cannot prevent
> important discussions from moving to other venues (which will necessarily
> be a worse match for those values). There is a lesson there, although I'm
> afraid it will take some more time before we learn it.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems

[Gergő Tisza]

One example of the shortcomings of emails as a medium for complex
discussions is how this thread about postmortems continues to be diverted
into discussions about Facebook, despite Pete's best efforts.

At the end of the day, people will prefer tools that work well over tools
that align philosophically. One can sabotage the development of tools that
would both work well and uphold Wikimedia's values, but cannot prevent
important discussions from moving to other venues (which will necessarily
be a worse match for those values). There is a lesson there, although I'm
afraid it will take some more time before we learn it.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems

[Andrew Lih]

On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 9:23 PM, Thyge  wrote:

> I acknowledge that a group of wikipedians may discuss in any forum, they
> prefer. Doing
> it in a closed forum on FB does not, however, constitute a discussion by
> the community,
> because it excludes a  lot of people who reject i.e. the FB license, the FB
> terms of use, and
> last not least the FB privacy policy.
>

True, though IRC also excludes a lot of people as it’s not allowed to be
logged, thereby leaving many people out of the loop.

As was mentioned in the introduction message, it is not meant to replace
anything that exists currently and it does not purport to declare itself
“the community.” (Though “the community” has always been a vague and
imperfect construct so as to be nearly meaningless, even before the
emergence of this Facebook group.)

If the forum helps with engagement with our movement, I’m glad it serves
that purpose, such as highlighting goings-on in spaces we already have.


> The latter is of special interest to me after having served as an ombudsman
> for wikimedia.
> Are people aware of the fact, that joining that group and commenting there
> could easily lead to
> their real identity being linked to their wiki user name - and that this in
> some cases could be
> more dangerous than "voicing their opinions in other forums"?
>

I’d be shocked if people participating there were not aware that their IRL
identities could be linked to their Wikipedia identities. That’s a
determination folks have made, and are satisfied with. Though, this is
probably not a bad thing to remind folks of in that intro message.

Best,
-Andrew
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems

[Thyge]

I acknowledge that a group of wikipedians may discuss in any forum, they
prefer. Doing
it in a closed forum on FB does not, however, constitute a discussion by
the community,
because it excludes a  lot of people who reject i.e. the FB license, the FB
terms of use, and
last not least the FB privacy policy.

The latter is of special interest to me after having served as an ombudsman
for wikimedia.
Are people aware of the fact, that joining that group and commenting there
could easily lead to
their real identity being linked to their wiki user name - and that this in
some cases could be
more dangerous than "voicing their opinions in other forums"?

Regards,
Thyge


2016-02-22 2:57 GMT+01:00 Andrew Lih :

> Hi all, it’s probably useful to paste in the “What for?” message for the
> Wikipedia Weekly Facebook group. Hopefully it will help clear things up.
>
> —-
> From:
>
> https://www.facebook.com/notes/wikipedia-weekly/introduction-to-the-ww-group/961015923946239
>
> This is a quick note about what goes on here in the Wikipedia Weekly
> Facebook group. Thanks for joining what has become a useful forum in the
> last few years, and especially in recent months.
>
> Perhaps a useful motto for this group is: "High signal, key voices,
> efficient volume." That's a label few would use to describe Wikimedia-L or
> on-wiki discussions, even though those are very necessary and key parts of
> the movement. In many ways, this is a meta-news group, pointing to the best
> and most interesting things happening in our community and the public. It's
> not meant to be a direct replacement for any venue that exists now.
>
> This group started informally as a lively community space in lieu of, or in
> reaction to, Wikipedia Weekly podcast episodes. Signpost, Wikimedia chapter
> folks, WMF comms team, bloggers or any concerned community members are
> welcome in the interest of productive and informative discussions about the
> movement. One of the key aspects is that this is a respectful and highly
> interactive space that, like it or not, is Facebook's main value.
>
> As for the public/private nature of what is said here: we probably don't
> have a great term for it. In some sense, it's like the open access vs TWL
> (The Wikipedia Library) argument – should the comments here be referenced
> (or given prominence) if it's firewalled behind a Facebook login. People
> can be expected to be quoted here, but not truly hyperlinked-to. Signpost,
> for example, has referenced discussions here on multiple occasions in its
> news stories. This group might get people to write opinions they wouldn't
> voice in other forums. I see that as a useful part of our communications
> ecosystem.
>
> Experiments like Discourse (https://discourse.wmflabs.org/) might be the
> answer to help moderate the noisy, disparate and acerbic social spaces in
> our movement, and I welcome it. For now, I like that this group is serving
> an unmet need, and I thank the folks here for making it engaged and
> meaningful.
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 7:26 PM, Risker  wrote:
>
> > I can agree with what you're saying, Craig.  I can also understand what
> > Brandon is saying - that some people prefer that interface.
> >
> > Unlike many Facebook pages, though, this one is not public and cannot be
> > viewed by anyone who does not have a FB account.  It's the one venue that
> > many interested parties cannot even read, let alone participate in,
> unless
> > they're willing to give up some fairly significant privacy.  I am
> > disappointed, but I do not hold it against anyone for preferring to
> discuss
> > issues in a venue not associated with Wikimedia.
> >
> > Risker/Anne
> >
> > On 21 February 2016 at 19:01, Craig Franklin 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > People will have discussions at a location that is personally
> convenient
> > > for them.  Unless you're going to reprogram human nature, I don't see
> > that
> > > there's anything to be done about the resulting balkanisation of the
> > > discussion.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > Craig
> > >
> > > On 22 February 2016 at 09:54, Thyge  wrote:
> > >
> > > > I really wonder why wikimedia discussions have migrated to FB. Are we
> > > > applying for a grant?
> > > >
> > > > Thyge
> > > >
> > > > 2016-02-22 0:51 GMT+01:00 Newyorkbrad :
> > > >
> > > > > I too am one of those people who is not to be found on Facebook.  I
> > > > > only have room in my life for one online timesink ... and I already
> > > > > have Wikipedia :)
> > > > >
> > > > > Newyorkbrad
> > > > >
> > > > > On 2/21/16, Risker  wrote:
> > > > > > As has already been explained on this list, many people do not
> have
> > > > > access
> > > > > > to Facebook.  If this is something germane and useful to a lot of
> > > > people
> > > > > on
> > > > > > this list, perhaps it would be appropriate to ask Jonathan to
> post
> > it
> > > > > here.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Risker/Anne
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On 21 February 2016 at 18:34, Anthony Cole 
> > > > wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems

[Andrew Lih]

Hi all, it’s probably useful to paste in the “What for?” message for the
Wikipedia Weekly Facebook group. Hopefully it will help clear things up.

—-
From:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/wikipedia-weekly/introduction-to-the-ww-group/961015923946239

This is a quick note about what goes on here in the Wikipedia Weekly
Facebook group. Thanks for joining what has become a useful forum in the
last few years, and especially in recent months.

Perhaps a useful motto for this group is: "High signal, key voices,
efficient volume." That's a label few would use to describe Wikimedia-L or
on-wiki discussions, even though those are very necessary and key parts of
the movement. In many ways, this is a meta-news group, pointing to the best
and most interesting things happening in our community and the public. It's
not meant to be a direct replacement for any venue that exists now.

This group started informally as a lively community space in lieu of, or in
reaction to, Wikipedia Weekly podcast episodes. Signpost, Wikimedia chapter
folks, WMF comms team, bloggers or any concerned community members are
welcome in the interest of productive and informative discussions about the
movement. One of the key aspects is that this is a respectful and highly
interactive space that, like it or not, is Facebook's main value.

As for the public/private nature of what is said here: we probably don't
have a great term for it. In some sense, it's like the open access vs TWL
(The Wikipedia Library) argument – should the comments here be referenced
(or given prominence) if it's firewalled behind a Facebook login. People
can be expected to be quoted here, but not truly hyperlinked-to. Signpost,
for example, has referenced discussions here on multiple occasions in its
news stories. This group might get people to write opinions they wouldn't
voice in other forums. I see that as a useful part of our communications
ecosystem.

Experiments like Discourse (https://discourse.wmflabs.org/) might be the
answer to help moderate the noisy, disparate and acerbic social spaces in
our movement, and I welcome it. For now, I like that this group is serving
an unmet need, and I thank the folks here for making it engaged and
meaningful.


On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 7:26 PM, Risker  wrote:

> I can agree with what you're saying, Craig.  I can also understand what
> Brandon is saying - that some people prefer that interface.
>
> Unlike many Facebook pages, though, this one is not public and cannot be
> viewed by anyone who does not have a FB account.  It's the one venue that
> many interested parties cannot even read, let alone participate in, unless
> they're willing to give up some fairly significant privacy.  I am
> disappointed, but I do not hold it against anyone for preferring to discuss
> issues in a venue not associated with Wikimedia.
>
> Risker/Anne
>
> On 21 February 2016 at 19:01, Craig Franklin 
> wrote:
>
> > People will have discussions at a location that is personally convenient
> > for them.  Unless you're going to reprogram human nature, I don't see
> that
> > there's anything to be done about the resulting balkanisation of the
> > discussion.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Craig
> >
> > On 22 February 2016 at 09:54, Thyge  wrote:
> >
> > > I really wonder why wikimedia discussions have migrated to FB. Are we
> > > applying for a grant?
> > >
> > > Thyge
> > >
> > > 2016-02-22 0:51 GMT+01:00 Newyorkbrad :
> > >
> > > > I too am one of those people who is not to be found on Facebook.  I
> > > > only have room in my life for one online timesink ... and I already
> > > > have Wikipedia :)
> > > >
> > > > Newyorkbrad
> > > >
> > > > On 2/21/16, Risker  wrote:
> > > > > As has already been explained on this list, many people do not have
> > > > access
> > > > > to Facebook.  If this is something germane and useful to a lot of
> > > people
> > > > on
> > > > > this list, perhaps it would be appropriate to ask Jonathan to post
> it
> > > > here.
> > > > >
> > > > > Risker/Anne
> > > > >
> > > > > On 21 February 2016 at 18:34, Anthony Cole 
> > > wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > >> For those not following, I recommend the discussion in response to
> > > > >> Jonathan
> > > > >> Cardy's comment here:
> > > > >>
> > > > >>
> > > >
> > >
> >
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/permalink/960989863948845/
> > > > >>
> > > > >> Anthony Cole
> > > > >> ___
> > > > >> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > > > >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > > > >> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > >> Unsubscribe:
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> > > ,
> > > > >>  > ?subject=unsubscribe>
> > > > > ___
> > > > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > > > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > > > > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lis

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[Brion Vibber]

Lila, a few notes.

First, many staff members feel that the accomplishments you claim under
"we" are not attributable to you.

Complaints about lack of strategy and confusing management have come from
all levels of the staff; the implication that people who failed to be
promoted might be behind discontent seems not to hold water.

As to shutting down pet projects to improve focus, it's unclear what
projects you refer to.

Fundamentally we agree that we must improve tech. But the tech side of the
organization, based on my conversations with other employees including
managers, does not seem to have benefited from your tenure -- ops laregely
manages itself, while the other sections get occasionally surprised by a
reorg. We've still not fully recovered from the 2015 reorg and Damon's
appearance and disappearance.

If your contention is that tech supports you as a silent majority, I have
strong doubts that this is the case.

-- brion

On Feb 21, 2016 4:22 PM, "Lila Tretikov"  wrote:
>
> Why we’ve changed
>
>
> I want to address some of the many questions that are coming up in this
> forum. From the general to the very concrete, they all touch on the fact
> that many things about the WMF have been changing. We are in the thick of
> transformation, and you all have the right to know more about how and why
> this is occurring. This is not a statement of strategy, which will come
out
> of the community consultation next week. This is the ED’s perspective
only.
>
>
> After 15 years since the birth of Wikipedia, the WMF needs to rethink
> itself to ensure our editor work expands into the next decade. Recently we
> kicked-off some initiatives to this end, including aligning community
> support functions, focus on mobile and innovative technology, seeding the
> Wikimedia Endowment, re-organizing our internal structure, exploring
> partnerships and focusing on the most critical aspects of our mission:
> community and technology. We started this transformation, but as we move
> forward we are facing a crisis that is rooted in our choice of direction.
>
>
> The choice in front the WMF is that of our core identity. Our mission can
> be served in many ways, but we cannot do them all. We could either fully
> focus on building our content and educational programs. Or we can get
great
> at technology as the force multiplier for our movement. I believe the the
> former belongs to our volunteers and affiliates and that the role of the
> WMF is in providing global support and coordination of this work. I
believe
> in -- and the board hired me to -- focus on the latter. To transform our
> organization into a high-tech NGO, focused on the needs of our editors and
> readers and rapidly moving to update our aged technology to support those
> needs. To this end we have made many significant changes. But the
challenge
> in front of us is hard to underestimate: technology moves faster than any
> other field and meeting expectations of editors and readers  will require
> undistracted focus.
>
>
> What changed?
>
>
> When Jimmy started Wikipedia, the early editors took a century-old
> encyclopedia page and allowed anyone to create or edit its content. At the
> time when creating knowledge was still limited to the chosen few, openly
> collaborating online gave us power to create and update knowledge at a
much
> faster rate than anyone else. This was our innovation.
>
>
> As we matured, we encountered two fundamental, existential challenges. One
> is of our own doing: driving away those who would otherwise join our
> mission through complex policies, confusing user experiences, and a
caustic
> community culture. The other is external and is emerging from our own
value
> of freely licensed content: Many companies copy our knowledge into their
> own databases and present it inside their interfaces. While this supports
> wider dissemination, it also separates our readers from our community.
> Wikipedia
> is more than the raw content, repurposed by anyone as they like. It is a
> platform for knowledge and learning, but if we don't meet the needs of
> users, we will lose them and ultimately fail in our mission.
>
>
> Meanwhile, in the last 15 years revolutionary changes have taken hold. The
> rate of knowledge creation around the world is unprecedented and is
increasing
> exponentially .
User
> interfaces are becoming more adaptive to how users learn. This means we
> have a huge opportunity to accelerate human understanding. But to do so
> requires some significant change in technology and community interaction.
>
>
> So let’s begin with technology: Many at the WMF and in our community
> believe that we should not be a high-tech organization. I believe we
> should. With over half of our staff fully committed to delivering product
> and technology, it is already our primary vehicle for impacting our
mission
> and our community. In fact we constantly see additional technology needs
> emerging 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] "BuzzFeed: Days of Counting Pageviews and Unique Visitors Are Over"

[Ed Erhart]

Hi Pine,

A big part of our efforts are to humanize the movement, surface our
content, and reach new audiences—research shows that public awareness of
Wikipedia and what it does is not as high as you'd think in emerging
communities.

The blog has been running in-depth and detailed articles like "News on
Wikipedia: Antonin Scalia and the editor tracking his legacy,"[1] "These
Texans are on a quest to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of their state’s
revolution,"[2] and "Fifteen years ago, Wikipedia was a very different
place: Magnus Manske"[3] to showcase our editors and contributors, along
with their contributions to the movement. We plan to continue this in the
coming months.

Our posts that look at article popularity try to go deeper, examining the
editing behind them. Antonin Scalia does that, as does "Millions read Bowie
biography following sudden death."[4] We highlight featured articles
wherever possible.

We also surface fantastic content from our contributors, such as "Recording
romanticism and filling Wikimedia Commons with 19th-century music"[5] or
"Love is strange: ten weird Valentine’s facts from Wikipedia,"[6] although
I freely admit that our social media platforms can do this far more often
than the blog can. 

I'm cc'ing Jeff Elder, Digital Communications Manager, on this email so
that he can talk about his fantastic work on social media. Some of the
comments we get are astounding, and we've started the process of expanding
to new platforms—including Instagram.[7]

Best,
--Ed

[1] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/17/scalia-wikipedia/
[2]
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/06/30/improving-wikipedia-texas-revolution/
[3]
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/18/fifteen-years-wikipedia-magnus-manske/
[4] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/28/bowie-death-wikipedia/
[5] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/14/spain-recording-romanticism/
[6] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/12/love-is-strange/
[7] https://www.instagram.com/wikipedia/

On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 5:33 PM, Pine W  wrote:

> An interesting article in Fortune:
> http://fortune.com/2016/02/19/buzzfeed-metrics/. "One of the biggest
> challenges in online publishing, Nguyen says, is the continual process of
> re-evaluating what criteria the company should be looking at in order to
> gauge its effectiveness in reaching an audience, a process that BuzzFeed
> calls “re-anchoring.” In effect, it’s an almost scientific approach of
> checking to see whether the thing being measured is actually the thing that
> is most important."
>
> While WMF seems to be focused on pageviews for fundraising reasons (and I
> would guess that this is also the thinking behind WMF Communications
> increasing its staff and budget for social media), I hope that we can
> explicitly include off-wiki uses of Wikimedia content in our measures of
> impact and success.
>
> Pine
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> 




-- 
Ed Erhart
Editorial Associate
Wikimedia Foundation
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[Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

[Pete Forsyth]

The discussion about post-mortems arose rather organically, not as a result
of a decision to use a certain medium. The participants were: Jonathan
Cardy, Erik Möller, Dariusz Jemielniak, myself, Ben Creasy, Asaf Bartov,
Jon Beasley-Murray, Bence Damakos, Luis Villa, Eddie Erhart, Liam Wyatt,
and Tisza Gergő. I think it is fair to say that we had a general consensus
that:

When something does not go well (for instance, various software releases),
it would be highly valuable for the Wikimedia Foundation's senior
leadership to prioritize creating a thoughtful and official post-mortem
document and discussion. Post-mortems can support learning by the
organization, and also by other people and organizations who might take on
similar projects, and can make it possible for those who feel unheard to
"move on" (as is so frequently requested), with the knowledge that their
opinions have been heard and may be incorporated into future efforts. The
one time the organization had such an executive-led post-mortem was about
the Belfer Center Wikipedian in Residence; I think we all agreed the
outcomes of this post-mortem were valuable:[1] In addition, Gergő mentioned
his post-mortem on the Media Viewer, which I (and perhaps some others) had
not been previously aware of.[2]

The discussion concluded with the idea that perhaps the present crisis
offers a good opportunity to instill a culture of reflecting on mistakes
into the organization's ethos. Since Dariusz was involved in the
discussion, I'm confident that idea will be brought back to the Board, and
I view this as a positive outcome.

Below, I'll paste Erik's initial comment, which began with the words "For
the record..." (which I take as an indication he is willing to have the
words republished), and which generated 29 "Likes" (far more than I'm used
to seeing for any comment at Wikipedia Weekly).

Erik Möller:
For the record, the desire to "hit the deadline" for the VisualEditor
release extended beyond any grant agreement. (If that had been all there
was to it, I would have pushed back.) The Board independently had
repeatedly pushed to meet the arbitrary schedule, and even the team itself
was motivated at the time to finally go in front of a larger audience, as I
think James would attest. The project had already been delayed repeatedly;
there was even impatience in parts of the community and the press.

So there was a general, shared feeling that we needed to do better. I take
responsibility for not putting on the brakes; it was due to my own lack of
experience and focus at the time.

My takeaway is that we simply didn't yet have mature processes in place for
a release of this scope and complexity. For instance, even the community
liaison support was conceived at the last minute. We made a lot of changes
in the years that followed, some under Sue (e.g., addition of a "Beta
Features" program, improved testing infrastructure, QA support), some under
Lila (focus on performance & analytics), some after I left. I'm sure in
some respects there's still lots of room for improvement in engineering
processes.

I agree with Ori's point on the list, however, that most of this continuous
improvement has been going on in spite of, not because of, what's been
happening at the top. That's in many ways how it should be -- WMF's
engineering organization has the capacity for independent self-improvement
in all areas. But of course the drama that's going on right now is entirely
avoidable and depressing, and if it continues, will damage existing
capabilities and lead to regressions in important areas as key people leave.

I don't have regrets about leaving -- I was going to stick around for
another 1-2 years at most; I was never cut out to be a lifer, and I left
voluntarily because it was clear things were going to just continue to
deteriorate at the top. But if some of the key folks in engineering left,
that would really really suck. You don't want that to happen, trust me.
These are good, super-talented people, and the institutional/technical
memory that would leave with them would set the org back severely.
(end of Erik's comment)

-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]

[1]
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Assessment_of_Belfer_Center_Wikipedian_in_Residence_program
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Retrospective

On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 3:34 PM, Anthony Cole  wrote:

> For those not following, I recommend the discussion in response to Jonathan
> Cardy's comment here:
>
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/permalink/960989863948845/
>
> Anthony Cole
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
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[Wikimedia-l] Facebook as a discussion mediam (was: Post mortems)

[Pete Forsyth]

I think the discussion about post-mortems is vitally important, so I'm
adding a new subject line for the discussion about the venue. I was one of
the people involved in the discussion of post-mortems, and I'll add my
comments to the original thread (and summarize what others have said) in a
moment.
-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]

On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 4:26 PM, Risker  wrote:

> I can agree with what you're saying, Craig.  I can also understand what
> Brandon is saying - that some people prefer that interface.
>
> Unlike many Facebook pages, though, this one is not public and cannot be
> viewed by anyone who does not have a FB account.  It's the one venue that
> many interested parties cannot even read, let alone participate in, unless
> they're willing to give up some fairly significant privacy.  I am
> disappointed, but I do not hold it against anyone for preferring to discuss
> issues in a venue not associated with Wikimedia.
>
> Risker/Anne
>
> On 21 February 2016 at 19:01, Craig Franklin 
> wrote:
>
> > People will have discussions at a location that is personally convenient
> > for them.  Unless you're going to reprogram human nature, I don't see
> that
> > there's anything to be done about the resulting balkanisation of the
> > discussion.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Craig
> >
> > On 22 February 2016 at 09:54, Thyge  wrote:
> >
> > > I really wonder why wikimedia discussions have migrated to FB. Are we
> > > applying for a grant?
> > >
> > > Thyge
> > >
> > > 2016-02-22 0:51 GMT+01:00 Newyorkbrad :
> > >
> > > > I too am one of those people who is not to be found on Facebook.  I
> > > > only have room in my life for one online timesink ... and I already
> > > > have Wikipedia :)
> > > >
> > > > Newyorkbrad
> > > >
> > > > On 2/21/16, Risker  wrote:
> > > > > As has already been explained on this list, many people do not have
> > > > access
> > > > > to Facebook.  If this is something germane and useful to a lot of
> > > people
> > > > on
> > > > > this list, perhaps it would be appropriate to ask Jonathan to post
> it
> > > > here.
> > > > >
> > > > > Risker/Anne
> > > > >
> > > > > On 21 February 2016 at 18:34, Anthony Cole 
> > > wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > >> For those not following, I recommend the discussion in response to
> > > > >> Jonathan
> > > > >> Cardy's comment here:
> > > > >>
> > > > >>
> > > >
> > >
> >
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/permalink/960989863948845/
> > > > >>
> > > > >> Anthony Cole
> > > > >> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems

[Risker]

I can agree with what you're saying, Craig.  I can also understand what
Brandon is saying - that some people prefer that interface.

Unlike many Facebook pages, though, this one is not public and cannot be
viewed by anyone who does not have a FB account.  It's the one venue that
many interested parties cannot even read, let alone participate in, unless
they're willing to give up some fairly significant privacy.  I am
disappointed, but I do not hold it against anyone for preferring to discuss
issues in a venue not associated with Wikimedia.

Risker/Anne

On 21 February 2016 at 19:01, Craig Franklin 
wrote:

> People will have discussions at a location that is personally convenient
> for them.  Unless you're going to reprogram human nature, I don't see that
> there's anything to be done about the resulting balkanisation of the
> discussion.
>
> Cheers,
> Craig
>
> On 22 February 2016 at 09:54, Thyge  wrote:
>
> > I really wonder why wikimedia discussions have migrated to FB. Are we
> > applying for a grant?
> >
> > Thyge
> >
> > 2016-02-22 0:51 GMT+01:00 Newyorkbrad :
> >
> > > I too am one of those people who is not to be found on Facebook.  I
> > > only have room in my life for one online timesink ... and I already
> > > have Wikipedia :)
> > >
> > > Newyorkbrad
> > >
> > > On 2/21/16, Risker  wrote:
> > > > As has already been explained on this list, many people do not have
> > > access
> > > > to Facebook.  If this is something germane and useful to a lot of
> > people
> > > on
> > > > this list, perhaps it would be appropriate to ask Jonathan to post it
> > > here.
> > > >
> > > > Risker/Anne
> > > >
> > > > On 21 February 2016 at 18:34, Anthony Cole 
> > wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> For those not following, I recommend the discussion in response to
> > > >> Jonathan
> > > >> Cardy's comment here:
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > >
> >
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/permalink/960989863948845/
> > > >>
> > > >> Anthony Cole
> > > >> ___
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> > > >> Unsubscribe:
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[Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

[Lila Tretikov]

Why we’ve changed


I want to address some of the many questions that are coming up in this
forum. From the general to the very concrete, they all touch on the fact
that many things about the WMF have been changing. We are in the thick of
transformation, and you all have the right to know more about how and why
this is occurring. This is not a statement of strategy, which will come out
of the community consultation next week. This is the ED’s perspective only.


After 15 years since the birth of Wikipedia, the WMF needs to rethink
itself to ensure our editor work expands into the next decade. Recently we
kicked-off some initiatives to this end, including aligning community
support functions, focus on mobile and innovative technology, seeding the
Wikimedia Endowment, re-organizing our internal structure, exploring
partnerships and focusing on the most critical aspects of our mission:
community and technology. We started this transformation, but as we move
forward we are facing a crisis that is rooted in our choice of direction.


The choice in front the WMF is that of our core identity. Our mission can
be served in many ways, but we cannot do them all. We could either fully
focus on building our content and educational programs. Or we can get great
at technology as the force multiplier for our movement. I believe the the
former belongs to our volunteers and affiliates and that the role of the
WMF is in providing global support and coordination of this work. I believe
in -- and the board hired me to -- focus on the latter. To transform our
organization into a high-tech NGO, focused on the needs of our editors and
readers and rapidly moving to update our aged technology to support those
needs. To this end we have made many significant changes. But the challenge
in front of us is hard to underestimate: technology moves faster than any
other field and meeting expectations of editors and readers  will require
undistracted focus.


What changed?


When Jimmy started Wikipedia, the early editors took a century-old
encyclopedia page and allowed anyone to create or edit its content. At the
time when creating knowledge was still limited to the chosen few, openly
collaborating online gave us power to create and update knowledge at a much
faster rate than anyone else. This was our innovation.


As we matured, we encountered two fundamental, existential challenges. One
is of our own doing: driving away those who would otherwise join our
mission through complex policies, confusing user experiences, and a caustic
community culture. The other is external and is emerging from our own value
of freely licensed content: Many companies copy our knowledge into their
own databases and present it inside their interfaces. While this supports
wider dissemination, it also separates our readers from our community.
Wikipedia
is more than the raw content, repurposed by anyone as they like. It is a
platform for knowledge and learning, but if we don't meet the needs of
users, we will lose them and ultimately fail in our mission.


Meanwhile, in the last 15 years revolutionary changes have taken hold. The
rate of knowledge creation around the world is unprecedented and is increasing
exponentially . User
interfaces are becoming more adaptive to how users learn. This means we
have a huge opportunity to accelerate human understanding. But to do so
requires some significant change in technology and community interaction.


So let’s begin with technology: Many at the WMF and in our community
believe that we should not be a high-tech organization. I believe we
should. With over half of our staff fully committed to delivering product
and technology, it is already our primary vehicle for impacting our mission
and our community. In fact we constantly see additional technology needs
emerging from our Community department to help amplify theirs and our
community work.


What do we need to do in light of the changes I described above? We need to
focus on increasing productivity of our editors and bringing more readers
to Wikipedia (directly on mobile, and from 3rd party reusers back to our
sites).


When we started, the open knowledge on Wikipedia was a large piece of the
internet. Today, we have an opportunity to be the door into the whole
ecosystem of open knowledge by:



   -

   scaling knowledge (by building smart editing tools that structurally
   connect open sources)
   -

   expanding the entry point to knowledge (by improving our search portal)


There are many ways to alleviate the manual burdens of compiling and
maintaining knowledge currently taken on by our editing community, while
quickly expanding new editing. We made significant strides this year with
our first steps to leverage artificial intelligence

to remove grunt work from editing. But that is just a start. Connecting
sources through structured data 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems

[Craig Franklin]

People will have discussions at a location that is personally convenient
for them.  Unless you're going to reprogram human nature, I don't see that
there's anything to be done about the resulting balkanisation of the
discussion.

Cheers,
Craig

On 22 February 2016 at 09:54, Thyge  wrote:

> I really wonder why wikimedia discussions have migrated to FB. Are we
> applying for a grant?
>
> Thyge
>
> 2016-02-22 0:51 GMT+01:00 Newyorkbrad :
>
> > I too am one of those people who is not to be found on Facebook.  I
> > only have room in my life for one online timesink ... and I already
> > have Wikipedia :)
> >
> > Newyorkbrad
> >
> > On 2/21/16, Risker  wrote:
> > > As has already been explained on this list, many people do not have
> > access
> > > to Facebook.  If this is something germane and useful to a lot of
> people
> > on
> > > this list, perhaps it would be appropriate to ask Jonathan to post it
> > here.
> > >
> > > Risker/Anne
> > >
> > > On 21 February 2016 at 18:34, Anthony Cole 
> wrote:
> > >
> > >> For those not following, I recommend the discussion in response to
> > >> Jonathan
> > >> Cardy's comment here:
> > >>
> > >>
> >
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/permalink/960989863948845/
> > >>
> > >> Anthony Cole
> > >> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems

[Brandon Harris]

Because Talk pages suck as a medium for conversation and all attempts 
to fix this have been shot down with venom.


> On Feb 21, 2016, at 3:54 PM, Thyge  wrote:
> 
> I really wonder why wikimedia discussions have migrated to FB. Are we
> applying for a grant?

---
Brandon Harris :: bhar...@gaijin.com :: made of steel wool and whiskey




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems

[Thyge]

I really wonder why wikimedia discussions have migrated to FB. Are we
applying for a grant?

Thyge

2016-02-22 0:51 GMT+01:00 Newyorkbrad :

> I too am one of those people who is not to be found on Facebook.  I
> only have room in my life for one online timesink ... and I already
> have Wikipedia :)
>
> Newyorkbrad
>
> On 2/21/16, Risker  wrote:
> > As has already been explained on this list, many people do not have
> access
> > to Facebook.  If this is something germane and useful to a lot of people
> on
> > this list, perhaps it would be appropriate to ask Jonathan to post it
> here.
> >
> > Risker/Anne
> >
> > On 21 February 2016 at 18:34, Anthony Cole  wrote:
> >
> >> For those not following, I recommend the discussion in response to
> >> Jonathan
> >> Cardy's comment here:
> >>
> >>
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/permalink/960989863948845/
> >>
> >> Anthony Cole
> >> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems

[Newyorkbrad]

I too am one of those people who is not to be found on Facebook.  I
only have room in my life for one online timesink ... and I already
have Wikipedia :)

Newyorkbrad

On 2/21/16, Risker  wrote:
> As has already been explained on this list, many people do not have access
> to Facebook.  If this is something germane and useful to a lot of people on
> this list, perhaps it would be appropriate to ask Jonathan to post it here.
>
> Risker/Anne
>
> On 21 February 2016 at 18:34, Anthony Cole  wrote:
>
>> For those not following, I recommend the discussion in response to
>> Jonathan
>> Cardy's comment here:
>>
>> https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/permalink/960989863948845/
>>
>> Anthony Cole
>> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems

[Risker]

As has already been explained on this list, many people do not have access
to Facebook.  If this is something germane and useful to a lot of people on
this list, perhaps it would be appropriate to ask Jonathan to post it here.

Risker/Anne

On 21 February 2016 at 18:34, Anthony Cole  wrote:

> For those not following, I recommend the discussion in response to Jonathan
> Cardy's comment here:
>
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/permalink/960989863948845/
>
> Anthony Cole
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[Wikimedia-l] Post mortems

[Anthony Cole]

For those not following, I recommend the discussion in response to Jonathan
Cardy's comment here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/wikipediaweekly/permalink/960989863948845/

Anthony Cole
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Access to pageviews (was: An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT)

[Dan Andreescu]

>
> I have followed that process, been subscribed to
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T44259 which I just reread
> and thus rather surprised by your comment.  I have never
> seen any technical reason mentioned in the bug.  It would
> have been very helpful, because someone might have come up
> with a fix in the two years when it was "on our roadmap" un-
> til you overcame them.
>

It wasn't my intention to dig up this history, just to point out that the
real story is always more complex.  That applies to whatever explanation I
give here, as well.  It's from my perspective, and the nuance is endless.
Anyway, I'm more than happy to try and shed light, hopefully this helps for
future work we do together.

The technical challenge was, basically, moving off of our udp2log based
logging infrastructure to Kafka.  I think it's fair to say that the
Analytics team didn't have the full trust and confidence of WMF until Toby
started turning that around.  We were submitted to some painful agile
coaching and were not allowed to implement the correct solution (Kafka)
fully, we were working with a patchwork system that still had single points
of failure and data loss.  Once we gained that trust, it still took while
to sort out how to tune Kafka so it reliably received traffic logs from all
of our caching centers, and let us know when it had loss or duplication of
data.  This work was in really good shape, if memory serves, by the end of
summer, 2014.  I incorrectly summarized that solely as a technical
challenge, it was a pretty tricky technical challenge combined with an
organizational one.  For the latter, if it helps, Sue and Erik both
acknowledged responsibility and things were much smoother after that.  (I
always had tremendous respect for the two of them, but that acknowledgement
was pretty amazing, and unique in my 12 years of experience).

At that point, October 2014, some of us, myself included, wanted to start
work on the pageview API.  We didn't get push-back as much as a strong push
to focus on Event Logging instead.  The Event Logging system, developed by
Ori, was also experiencing some pretty serious growing pains.  Outages were
becoming very frequent due to the increased traffic and lack of automated
monitoring and management.  Over the next few months we improved
performance and upgraded it to use Kafka as well, and solved those
problems.  Looking back, that's still a bittersweet choice for me.  This
work on Event Logging was absolutely key to the experiments that led to
Visual Editor's successful roll-out in 2015.  As one of many examples, this
dashboard would not have been possible without a stable Event Logging
platform: https://edit-analysis.wmflabs.org/compare/.  And, perhaps this
was Toby's strategic vision that I didn't see at the time, and very
important for us to keep our newly gained trust and independence within
WMF.  But, of course, it meant we had to delay the pageview API yet again.
That's the 6 month delay I mentioned.  And we didn't leave the community
hanging, we made the higher quality raw data available with mobile traffic
in this new dataset: http://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/pagecounts-all-sites/
as well as gave Henrik some support with stats.grok.se

Some of these things are mentioned on the epic T44259
, but some I didn't even truly
understand at the time, and some might have not been constructive to
mention.  I'm personally all ears at this point.  What of this should we
have noted on the task?  Like I said above, there's lots of detail, but at
some point it would feel like I'm a news reporter instead of an engineer :)
 Also, I'm not sure I would have seen it the same way.  Even a few months
ago when we released the pageview API I was still a bit bitter that the
Event Logging work was prioritized, and now I think that was me being
short-sighted to some extent.

Instead, I read for example Toby's comment at Magnus's blog
> (http://magnusmanske.de/wordpress/?p=173#comment-290):
>
> | […]
>
> | We’ve been prioritizing and working on these projects as our
> | resources allow and it’s important to understand that the
> | team has not been idle.  While we’ve done a less than stel-
> | lar job in communicating our progress to the community, in-
> | formation on what we’ve been doing is available via our
> | planning pages on mediawiki.  In the future, we will be more
> | proactive in communicating with the community regarding our
> | goals and projects.
>
> as meaning that there were no technical obstacles, but lim-
> ited resources that were directed to other projects (and ap-
> parently none that matched the popularity of a pageviews
> API).


Both can be true, and are true.  The challenge was great, from what I
understand what we accomplished took Twitter orders of magnitude more money
and people, a fact which makes me look at my teammates with complete awe
(they're amazing).  And, as I explained above, we also had to prioritize
other work.

[Wikimedia-l] "BuzzFeed: Days of Counting Pageviews and Unique Visitors Are Over"

[Pine W]

An interesting article in Fortune:
http://fortune.com/2016/02/19/buzzfeed-metrics/. "One of the biggest
challenges in online publishing, Nguyen says, is the continual process of
re-evaluating what criteria the company should be looking at in order to
gauge its effectiveness in reaching an audience, a process that BuzzFeed
calls “re-anchoring.” In effect, it’s an almost scientific approach of
checking to see whether the thing being measured is actually the thing that
is most important."

While WMF seems to be focused on pageviews for fundraising reasons (and I
would guess that this is also the thinking behind WMF Communications
increasing its staff and budget for social media), I hope that we can
explicitly include off-wiki uses of Wikimedia content in our measures of
impact and success.

Pine
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[Wikimedia-l] Access to pageviews (was: An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT)

[Tim Landscheidt]

Dan Andreescu  wrote:

> […]

> The pageview API, which is now being integrated into the Graph extension,
> stats tools, iOS app, and generally making a lot of people happy, has a
> long history.  Various members of the community have been requesting this
> feature with increasing fervor for over a decade.  I started at WMF in 2012
> and within 1 year I learned enough to be completely convinced that this was
> one of the most worthwhile projects we could embark on.  However, at this
> point, we *could not* expose any kind of remotely useful data via a
> pageview API, for technical reasons.  We overcame those reasons in October
> 2014, at which point it took us about 6 months to prioritize the project to
> actually do it.

> […]

I have followed that process, been subscribed to
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T44259 which I just reread
and thus rather surprised by your comment.  I have never
seen any technical reason mentioned in the bug.  It would
have been very helpful, because someone might have come up
with a fix in the two years when it was "on our roadmap" un-
til you overcame them.

Instead, I read for example Toby's comment at Magnus's blog
(http://magnusmanske.de/wordpress/?p=173#comment-290):

| […]

| We’ve been prioritizing and working on these projects as our
| resources allow and it’s important to understand that the
| team has not been idle.  While we’ve done a less than stel-
| lar job in communicating our progress to the community, in-
| formation on what we’ve been doing is available via our
| planning pages on mediawiki.  In the future, we will be more
| proactive in communicating with the community regarding our
| goals and projects.

as meaning that there were no technical obstacles, but lim-
ited resources that were directed to other projects (and ap-
parently none that matched the popularity of a pageviews
API).  My interpretation may have been biased by Magnus's
report above that:

| […]

| Like others, I have tried to get the Foundation to provide
| the page view data in a more accessible and local (as in
| toolserver/Labs) way.  Like others, I failed.  The last it-
| eration was a video meeting with the Analytics team (newly
| restarted, as the previous Analytics team didn’t really work
| out for a reason; I didn’t inquire too deeply), which ended
| with a promise to get this done Real Soon Now™, and the gen-
| erous offer to use the page view data from their hadoop
| cluster.  Except the cluster turned out to be empty; I then
| was encouraged to import the view data myself.  (No, this is
| not a joke.  I have the emails to prove it.)  As much as I
| enjoy working with and around the Wikiverse, I do have nei-
| ther the time, the bandwidth, nor the inclination to do your
| paid jobs for you, thank you very much.

| […]

which seems to indicate that it was indeed a problem of WMF
allocating (human) resources.

Tim


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[Pete Forsyth]

Though my intent was neither ironic nor cynical, Jane is right -- my email
last night was probably not as clear as it could have been.

As I see it, senior leadership (the board and the executive director) have
a special responsibility to help us all keep track of the bigger picture.
But senior leadership has been pretty silent lately, even as many staff and
community members talk about the bigger picture. Lila did write a blog post
last week,[1] but it was utterly unrelated to most of the concerns
expressed by community members. It seems likely to me that she did not
avail herself of the talents of her Communications team, which I imagine
could have told her that particular blog post would not help anything, and
could have steered her in a more productive direction. Instead, it fell to
two engineers (in the comment thread [2]) to offer the kind of commentary
that is actually helpful.

Andreas sent a message which is either (a) curious but not especially
useful, or (b) offers insight into where the organization has been trying
to go since 2008. If there should be any comment from senior leadership at
all, I would expect it to address (b); no comment at all might be
appropriate if (a).

But the *immediate* reply comes from somebody who has only been involved
since 2014 (rather than, say, Jimmy or Alice, who could speak more readily
to what has been going on since 2008). More significantly, it includes the
words "on my watch," which suggests to me that something unhealthy is going
on. We should not be in a state where leaders are more concerned about
their individual reputations, than about broad consideration of Wikimedia's
relationship with Google.

I find it fascinating because it is so very different from what I would
expect in professional communication, and depressing because it suggests
that the WMF has simply lost touch with what is important.

-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]

[1] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/16/wikimedia-search-future/
[2]
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/16/wikimedia-search-future/#comment-25102
and
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/16/wikimedia-search-future/#comment-25092

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 10:56 PM, Pete Forsyth 
wrote:

> An unusually immediate comment from Wikimedia leadership following
> Andreas' admittedly speculative comments.
>
> It's not about the relevance to the movement. It's not about the relevance
> to the organization. It's about an individual's role.
>
> This just got fascinating (and a little more depressing).
>
> -Pete
>
> [[User:Peteforsyth]]
>
>>
>> I am happy to talk to Signpost on-record about anything that has been
>> happening under my watch to minimize misinterpretations of second-hand
>> reports or further conjectures.
>>
>> Lila
>>
>> On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 9:57 PM, Andreas Kolbe 
>> wrote:
>>
>> > On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 10:56 PM, Anthony Cole 
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > > Lila should have taken the community along with her as the Knowledge
>> > Engine
>> > > project was evolving. I don't know what was behind her reticence. I
>> > presume
>> > > an element was unwillingness to announce a thing while the thing was
>> > > shifting and changing from one day to the next.
>> > >
>> >
>> >
>> > It was pointed out to me today that there is a court exhibit, no. 666,
>> made
>> > public in 2014 as part of the [[High-Tech Employee Antitrust
>> Litigation]]
>> > (the same case Arnnon Geshuri was involved in), which reproduces some
>> > correspondence between Sue Gardner, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, and
>> various
>> > Google managers.[1]
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > In short, Sheryl Sandberg (who'd formerly worked for Google) helped Sue
>> > Gardner by introducing her to senior management at Google. To do so,
>> > according to the court exhibit, Sandberg forwarded an email from Sue
>> > Gardner to Jonathan Rosenberg (then Senior Vice President of Products)
>> and
>> > others at Google:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ---o0o---
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > From: Sheryl Sandberg
>> >
>> > Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2008 7:40 PM
>> >
>> > To: Jonathan Rosenberg; Omid Kordestani; David Drummond; Megan Smith
>> >
>> > Subject: Fw: Thanks + a request re Google
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Jonathan, Omid, David, Megan - I was introduced to Sue by Roger. As you
>> can
>> > see below, they would love a better and more senior relationship with
>> > Google. Can I email introduce her to one of you?
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Please excuse blackberry-caused typos.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > -Original Message-
>> >
>> > From: Sue Gardner
>> >
>> > To: Sheryl Sandberg
>> >
>> > Sent: Mon Aug 04 10:02:01 2008
>> >
>> > Subject: Thanks + a request re Google
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Hi Sheryl,
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > It was terrific to finally meet you last week :-)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Here's a recap of the Google issue that I raised:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > I started as Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation last summer.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > A few months after that, Roger McNamee began introducing me to potential
>> > Wikipedia

Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[Andreas Kolbe]

Hi Lila,

Tony is the one who does interviews for the Signpost (I'm neither good at
interviewing, nor have the right equipment), and he requested an interview
with you last Wednesday, via Katherine Maher. We had a confirmation from
Juliet on Friday that the request had been received, but nothing further
since then.

Best,
Andreas

On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 7:32 AM, Lila Tretikov  wrote:

> Hi Pete, I proposed an interview to Andreas this morning in a private
> email, actually.
>
> Also, I want to explain myself as a human being, not only as an ED.
> Without filters.
>
> L
>
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 10:56 PM, Pete Forsyth 
> wrote:
>
> > An unusually immediate comment from Wikimedia leadership following
> Andreas'
> > admittedly speculative comments.
> >
> > It's not about the relevance to the movement. It's not about the
> relevance
> > to the organization. It's about an individual's role.
> >
> > This just got fascinating (and a little more depressing).
> >
> > -Pete
> >
> > [[User:Peteforsyth]]
> >
> > >
> > > I am happy to talk to Signpost on-record about anything that has been
> > > happening under my watch to minimize misinterpretations of second-hand
> > > reports or further conjectures.
> > >
> > > Lila
> > >
> > > On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 9:57 PM, Andreas Kolbe 
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 10:56 PM, Anthony Cole 
> > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Lila should have taken the community along with her as the
> Knowledge
> > > > Engine
> > > > > project was evolving. I don't know what was behind her reticence. I
> > > > presume
> > > > > an element was unwillingness to announce a thing while the thing
> was
> > > > > shifting and changing from one day to the next.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > It was pointed out to me today that there is a court exhibit, no.
> 666,
> > > made
> > > > public in 2014 as part of the [[High-Tech Employee Antitrust
> > Litigation]]
> > > > (the same case Arnnon Geshuri was involved in), which reproduces some
> > > > correspondence between Sue Gardner, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, and
> > > various
> > > > Google managers.[1]
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > In short, Sheryl Sandberg (who'd formerly worked for Google) helped
> Sue
> > > > Gardner by introducing her to senior management at Google. To do so,
> > > > according to the court exhibit, Sandberg forwarded an email from Sue
> > > > Gardner to Jonathan Rosenberg (then Senior Vice President of
> Products)
> > > and
> > > > others at Google:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ---o0o---
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > From: Sheryl Sandberg
> > > >
> > > > Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2008 7:40 PM
> > > >
> > > > To: Jonathan Rosenberg; Omid Kordestani; David Drummond; Megan Smith
> > > >
> > > > Subject: Fw: Thanks + a request re Google
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Jonathan, Omid, David, Megan - I was introduced to Sue by Roger. As
> you
> > > can
> > > > see below, they would love a better and more senior relationship with
> > > > Google. Can I email introduce her to one of you?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Please excuse blackberry-caused typos.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > -Original Message-
> > > >
> > > > From: Sue Gardner
> > > >
> > > > To: Sheryl Sandberg
> > > >
> > > > Sent: Mon Aug 04 10:02:01 2008
> > > >
> > > > Subject: Thanks + a request re Google
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Hi Sheryl,
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > It was terrific to finally meet you last week :-)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Here's a recap of the Google issue that I raised:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > I started as Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation last
> > summer.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > A few months after that, Roger McNamee began introducing me to
> > potential
> > > > Wikipedia donors in the valley. Most of that was great and
> successful,
> > > but
> > > > in a few cases -including once with a Google board member- I was
> > > surprised
> > > > to be have people cite 'loyalty to Google' as a reason to not give
> > money
> > > to
> > > > Wikipedia.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Their objections, which have been echoed to me several times since
> > then,
> > > > seem to fall into three categories:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > * A belief that Wikia Search is an attempt by Wikipedia to compete
> with
> > > > Google. (Many people don't realize the only thing shared between
> > > Wikipedia
> > > > and Wikia is our founder, Jimmy Wales. Nor do they realize that Jimmy
> > has
> > > > no day-to-day responsibilities at the Wikimedia Foundation.)
> > > >
> > > > * The view that because Wikipedia is non-commercial, it is
> > > anti-advertising
> > > > and anti-Google.
> > > >
> > > > * A belief that Knol is an attempt by Google to compete with
> Wikipedia.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > I personally don't believe any of this: I think Google and Wikipedia
> > can
> > > > and should have a complementary and positive relationship. And I
> gather
> > > > Larry and Sergey feel th

Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-21 14:03, Dan Andreescu wrote:






Allow me to give one specific limited example that touches on some of 
the
themes you raised here, Yaroslav.  My main point is that from the 
outside,
correlation of what happened during Sue's and Lila's leadership might 
seem

to imply causation, but I think the reality is much more complicated.



Hi Dan,

I am not implying causation. It might (or might not) have been 
reasonable to imply causation if problems started during Sue's tenure 
and ended right after Lila started. This was certainly not the case. The 
situation is clearly more complex than that, and I am not accusing 
anyone, just give my impression (which seem in this part to coincide 
with the others').


I just feel that this part of the story is less visible to those who did 
not participate in it directly and needs to be spelled out.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[philippe]

I rarely like to add "me too" posts, but Dan buried the lead here... The most 
important thing he said, in the long term, was the last sentence, which I have 
quoted below.

--
Philippe Beaudette
philippe.beaude...@icloud.com

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dan Andreescu 
> Date: February 21, 2016 at 5:03:01 AM PST
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT
> Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> 
>  I
> certainly wish the level of discourse here would be less violent, because
> we have to look at ourselves in the mirror when this is resolved and build
> our future together.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[Dan Andreescu]

>
> Again, I do not know who is right and who is wrong here, we have excellent
> examples of WMF staff work all the time through (let me name Maggie Dennis
> as an example of someone who is doing excellent work as both WMF staffer
> and a project volunteer, and there are more examples), but things
> definitely went suboptimal in that period. Volunteers can any moment, you
> know, walk away, and without them, WMF projects would die.
>

Allow me to give one specific limited example that touches on some of the
themes you raised here, Yaroslav.  My main point is that from the outside,
correlation of what happened during Sue's and Lila's leadership might seem
to imply causation, but I think the reality is much more complicated.

The pageview API, which is now being integrated into the Graph extension,
stats tools, iOS app, and generally making a lot of people happy, has a
long history.  Various members of the community have been requesting this
feature with increasing fervor for over a decade.  I started at WMF in 2012
and within 1 year I learned enough to be completely convinced that this was
one of the most worthwhile projects we could embark on.  However, at this
point, we *could not* expose any kind of remotely useful data via a
pageview API, for technical reasons.  We overcame those reasons in October
2014, at which point it took us about 6 months to prioritize the project to
actually do it.

My point is, Sue's support for this project wouldn't have mattered, it
wasn't technically possible during her tenure.  Sue did give us support for
the infrastructure groundwork, and that was key.  And Lila's support for
it, once we could do it, was not directly gained, we prioritized it
internally on my team with no interaction with Lila.  She saw it was our
goal and didn't reject it, but we spent literally a few minutes talking
about it that whole year.

In 2013, I was told by members of the community that us saying "it's not
possible to build a Pageview API" was considered "laughing at the
community" as you put it, Yaroslav.  But I hope, if nothing else, we've
proven that we never laughed, we tried our hardest and fought with some big
challenges to make it happen.  And none of it really had anything to do
with our ED.  So in this case, establishing causation all the way to the ED
would probably be impossible.  Logic tells me that this is probably true in
a lot of cases where now, in this dark time, we would want to look past
that complexity and establish causation that might not be there.

I am not defending or attacking Lila.  I am simply saying that, just
because we are in this position of questioning our leadership, it does not
mean we have to try and neatly package everything that happened under Sue
and everything that happened under Lila and try to compare.

The current questioning of leadership is a conversation about very specific
issues, of which the board is aware, and which WMF staff, despite all the
craziness, has had the restraint and humanity to not mention publicly.  I
certainly wish the level of discourse here would be less violent, because
we have to look at ourselves in the mirror when this is resolved and build
our future together.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

On 2016-02-21 09:52, Jane Darnell wrote:
Risker thanks for this. I would add that the biggest problem for 
outsiders

is trying to sift through the emails in this thread, looking for valid
concerns and first-hand accounts among the cynical and/or ironic 
comments
only understandable to a few players. As more and more of our 
international

community tries to read and follow along on these developments, let's
please stick to some ground rules: no irony, no cynicism, no rehashing 
old

mistakes if they are irrelevant. Challenging, but necessary if you want
more foreign chapter members to hear or take part in this conversation.



Let me give my perspective, since I believe an important part of the 
puzzle is missing or at least underappreciated on this list. I am not 
going to offer any solutions, I do not pretend I known more than other 
people know, but I do feel that this piece is needed to understand the 
big picture.


To give some background, I am just a volunteer. I am, you know, writing 
articles. I have administrator permissions on four projects (en.wp, 
ru.voy, Commons, and Wikidata), and I have globally about 200K non-bot 
edits from my two accounts, which is probably more than for most posters 
of this thread. I never worked for WMF, I have never been a member of 
any chapter, but I did participate in some committees and juries and 
whatever. I interacted with WMF staff in different roles - as WMF staff 
and also in their roles as volunteers on the projects. I am generally 
interested in Meta-issues and I am on this list since I believe 2007.


Now, I (and from what I know, other people as well) at some point 
started to have problems with WMF staff whose tasks were to facilitate 
our job. Not to say that everything was stellar before and that 
everything was stellar after, but the most difficult period started 
around 2013, definitely when Sue was the ED, and ended (or at least 
things went considerably better) in 2015, long after Lila became the ED. 
For people who were just writing articles there was nothing to change, 
but whenever someone wanted to do smth with requied interaction with WMF 
there was a large amount of red tape. WMF staff members were polite, but 
I did not get an impression that they listened to what we said - there 
were just assigned to do some work and they did not care what volunteers 
thought about it. The first major bell ring for me was when Gayle Karin 
Young removed the admin rights of all non-staff from the WMF wiki, 
without even notifying them - and then for several weeks nobody wanted 
to take responsibility and I believe in the end nobody apologized, and 
the wiki went into a pitiful state where I believe it still remains, so 
that this action was not only rude but also counterproductive. I could 
not easily find when it happened, but definitely before January 2014, 
when Gayle Karin left WMF. (Note that Lila started in May 2014). This is 
not such a big deal - in the end of the day, I never edited this wiki, 
and I am not sure it was needed - but it was a clear sign that you can 
invest quite some time in doing a good maintenance job which nobody 
wanted to do, and one day you just get a message "Hey, we have a change 
of the policy and decided you are no longer welcome here". Other things 
include superprotect, FLOW, VE early rollout on en.wp, toolserver, and a 
lot of lower-profile issues. Things started to improve considerably 
middle of the last year - first we were not just laughed at, and then 
most of the things (not all of them though - and also for example the 
Wikimania screwup happened in the end of the year) were reverted or 
shelved. Now I would define the relations as quasi-normal, with a number 
of really good things happening.


Again, I do not know who is right and who is wrong here, we have 
excellent examples of WMF staff work all the time through (let me name 
Maggie Dennis as an example of someone who is doing excellent work as 
both WMF staffer and a project volunteer, and there are more examples), 
but things definitely went suboptimal in that period. Volunteers can any 
moment, you know, walk away, and without them, WMF projects would die.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[Theo10011]

As I see it, there are 2 large issues here.

The staff morale and distrust being the first. The exodus of a good chunk
of staff was expected at the beginning - Erik and a few others were too
much a part of Sue's leadership and it seemed natural. New leadership would
entail, a new leadership style, new staff and getting rid of some of the
old. This wasn't a surprise - in the beginning. What became evident was the
revolving door of new hires as well, departure of quite prominent ones and
oldhands who had been vetted by the community, in community-facing
positions. All the while very important high level management positions
have remain vacant. If there was a staff reorganisation planned, it should
have been the priority before anything else to make it quick and painless
as possible. This was a big failing for Lila in terms of her priorities -
this should have been the first task before anything else.

I also don't understand why people think Sue's tenure was especially rosy.
Her start was quite rocky and we had a lot of bumps along the way. No
doubt, Lila's start has been far worse but the difference there might not
be as large. I see a lot of shortcomings in communication - there were a
lot of issues Sue kept contained (as a few would know), and certainly
increasing the staff to twice or thrice the size, isn't going to be easy to
monitor - bringing back the idea of making WMF smaller.

The simplest solution right now would be hiring a* new deputy*. I think
Lila needs a buffer. Someone much more closer to the staff that can fill
the community and staff facing requirements. Given the HR history, I also
think this task should be carried out by the board directly, and that too,
at the earliest. The task of replacing an ED is a long and public one.
Depending on how you look at it, we already need a deputy, it would be
filling a vacancy. The future direction can be decided once we stop the
hemorrhaging of talent and trust.

Second issue, is the KE. I don't know if Lila still thinks there are any
perceived benefit left with pursuing this ill-advised venture. Finding out
that Damon conceived it to take on Google along with his colorful paranioa
as brion put it, and the cryptic email last month - I have no faith in this
project along with most others on the list. If you separate the buzzwords
and corporate speak from the description on the FAQ page, KE seems like a
new search engine that will integrate OSM and other data, to reside at the
main domain. A smaller and better search that focused on improvements,
would have gone under the radar until you had a prototype or more of an
idea what exactly you wanted. But instead you filed a grant request from
another organisation - their lack of interest should have been an early
indicator here. The $250 K grant everyone thinks is a smoking gun would be
the tip of the iceberg, and ultimately irrelevant, if the figures I saw on
the FAQ page were true. This grant wouldn't cover development for 2 months
of a multi-year project - Ask yourself, was it worth it?

There are a lot of really smart people trying to tell you this is not a
good idea. Not to mention, the implication of designing in an open culture
- you can spend 32 million or 50 or 60, owing to our ethos we would have to
make it accessible and open - for anyone to copy and improve as they see
fit. And If Google remotely wanted something like this, those numbers are a
drop in the bucket - they have paid more for parking and transportation of
their employees than the entire budget of this project. This is only going
to be a sad mistake that can ruin an important relationship and hurt our
credibility. This is similar to the whole Arnon's debacle if the board is
listening, you can drag your feet, resist, ignore, hope it goes away but
you know the end. So, whether you do it now, or the next ED, or it happens
in an year by either one, the outcome is probably going to be the same -
junk it and move on. This already costed you and everyone else much more
than just money.

Regards
Theo

P.S. Andreas, you are one of the smartest commentators I read on this list.
You have great points and new information but really, there is an obsession
here with Google. There are real problems right now that are quite
unrelated to what Sue said in 2008. The donor agreement and relationship as
imagined by Sue 8 years ago has only tangential relationship to the
management issues right now and the lack of clarity related to KE. I can't
see the relationship you are trying to allude to here. I say this with
great respect, and appreciation for your opinions.


On Sun, Feb 21, 2016, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 20, 2016, Anthony Cole  wrote:
>
> > Lila should have taken the community along with her as the Knowledge
> Engine
> > project was evolving. I don't know what was behind her reticence. I
> presume
> > an element was unwillingness to announce a thing while the thing was
> > shifting and changing from one day to the next.
> >
>
>
> It was 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[Jane Darnell]

Risker thanks for this. I would add that the biggest problem for outsiders
is trying to sift through the emails in this thread, looking for valid
concerns and first-hand accounts among the cynical and/or ironic comments
only understandable to a few players. As more and more of our international
community tries to read and follow along on these developments, let's
please stick to some ground rules: no irony, no cynicism, no rehashing old
mistakes if they are irrelevant. Challenging, but necessary if you want
more foreign chapter members to hear or take part in this conversation.

For anyone who has seen the movie Spotlight, I would say this story is
currently "buried in Metro" but really needs to hit the front page.

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 9:54 PM, Risker  wrote:

> This is a difficult time for everyone.  Staff, particularly staff who work
> out of the San Francisco office, have seen and been through things that are
> not well known or understood outside of that small group; even "highly
> involved" volunteers aren't entirely in the loop.  Former staff continue to
> have a knowledge advantage over the vast majority of community members
> simply because of their continued ties to friends and former colleagues who
> remain on staff.
>
> I encourage everyone to treat each other with respect, even when
> disagreeing with the interpretations that other people have made based on
> the (often comparatively limited) information that they have available.  I
> can honestly say that I know some things that perhaps SarahSV and
> Anthonyhcole don't know, but I certainly don't know everything - and I have
> been in the SF offices twice in the last six months as a volunteer and
> regularly converse with staff in certain areas in my role as a volunteer
> working on various things.
>
> One of the major barriers is the legitimate concern that many staff have in
> trying to communicate concerns in a manner that is not destructive, either
> to the WMF as an organization, or to their own professional reputations.
> The whistleblower provisions at the WMF are very narrow (essentially only
> permitting reporting directly to the Board chair/chair of the Audit
> Committee if there is reason to believe that a law has been broken, not
> just internal policies no matter how severe), as one example.  I've been
> aware of concerns for about a year now, myself, but I've still found out
> quite a bit more over the last few weeks. For staff, a lot of those early
> concerns are practically ancient history, and that knowledge hasn't been
> disseminated to a much broader community. Not to put too fine a point on
> it, but the majority of the audience here doesn't know.
>
> Anthony, speaking for myself only, I don't think that your association with
> Wikipediocracy is particularly relevant; other active members of that site
> have expressed significantly different opinions, whether within or outside
> of "WMF-related" locations like this mailing list or Meta or The Signpost.
> I'd like to discourage anyone from assuming that there are monolithic and
> unified positions on the current situation amongst any particular group.
> That includes former and current staff, editors of particular projects,
> commenters on external blogs or through other non-WMF media or criticism
> sites, user groups, chapters, etc.  There are a lot of different points of
> view, and a lot of different levels of knowledge and information.
>
> I'm not going to say "let's assume good faith", don't worry.  I'm going to
> say "don't beat up on people who have different levels of information".
>
> Risker/Anne
>
>
>
> On 20 February 2016 at 20:31, Brandon Harris  wrote:
>
> >
> > Danny, don't kid yourself!  The folks at Wikipediocracy know
> > everything about everything that's happened at the Foundation and about
> > everything that will EVER happen.  They've never been wrong, ever!
> >
> > I don't understand why we're still talking about this!
> >
> >
> > > On Feb 20, 2016, at 5:29 PM, Danny Horn  wrote:
> > >
> > > You know, it's possible that the people who work for the Foundation
> might
> > > understand the situation in a more nuanced way than you do. I know it
> > > doesn't seem likely, but dare to dream.
> >
> > ---
> > Brandon Harris :: bhar...@gaijin.com :: made of steel wool and whiskey
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ___
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> > 
> >
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